It is good to know there are South Australians with a social conscience. Aboriginal Australians in the ‘bush’ are certainly not over protected, they are patronised – treated as inferior, as unable to cope with civilization, as unable to regulate themselves, as best left to their ‘natural’ state of ignorance. Herewith a few suggestions.
1. instead of sending in builders from interstate to construct new houses, send in a master builder, a registered plumber and drainer, a registered electrician, a landscape gardener… then employ only locals as paid apprentices so they learn the skills of carpentry, electrical work, plumbing and drainage etc. and later will be able to set up in business as maintenance and repair experts for their community.
2. instead of importing policemen from outside, select locals to train as police officers and let them return to their localities if they wish.
3. instead of importing doctors and nurses. Deliberately train indigenous people in basic first aid, nursing skills and send the best off to medical school where they receive as much help as needed, no matter what the cost, to qualify.
4. instead of importing teachers, select suitable students and give them all the emotional and financial and social support needed to attend teacher training courses and succeed.
5. instead of importing fruits and vegetables, create the infrastructure, give courses and practical assistance so market gardening can be carried on locally…

People who have been deliberately disadvantaged as long and as systematically as Australian Aborigines, need much, much more support than their affluent and socially protected white fellow citizens in order to succeed in gaining certification and expertise that will make them able to compete as professionals, workers, and businessmen and women. They have never received sufficient support. Always governments have provided services that are incomprehensible to anyone untrained, then complained that they were not looked after, that no one took up the scholarships etc… Adequate support and training leading to success in a friendly, non competitive atmosphere is the only solution to the despair and hopelessness that pervades disadvantaged people everywhere.

ybgirp,

Good stuff, and in the meantime the arse-bandits and general pedophiles continue on their merry way

Ever heard the phrase, you can lead a horse to water but you cant make it drink.?I grew up in the midst of an Aboriginal community,we travelled 2.5 hrs each way to school. My friends rarely made it to that train, yet were paid each week to attend school .Parents were paid to get the kids to the school. My parents PAID for me to go to school . Yet somehow there were disadvantaged and i wasn't. whole communities were built for the Aborigines, all they had to do was move in. Move in they did, then the houses were systematically destroyed, rebuilt and destroyed agained. Yep, i can see the disadvantage. Now if your asking about those in remote areas, i believe the problems inherent in those communities will remain so until some-one works out how to get those communities to become self reliant, both for employment, and daily resources. Alcohol is a big factor in the failure of these places, try to remove it and you'll become a racist so n so, or your discriminating.If yo fail in your undertakings to improve the lives you were not trying hard enough. No matter what you build, houseing/infrastructure it's not enough or not what was apparently wanted. It's no bloody wonder that the pollies have left it alone for so long.If like a previous person wrote, you send in the trainers and educate the people, what do they do when the place is rebuilt? What keeps the communities economy going? Who pays for house repairs? The gov.? That just replaces the welfare handout to a work for your handout system, still proped by the gov.? We have an issue in this country that needs some serious attention, sorry i dont have the answers, I'm beginning to think no-one has. I reckon the communities need to find away to become self focused and sufficient. How so is the Million dollar Q. maybe mainstream assimilation would work, if Australia was wholly assimilated as one people but we aren't, so thats out the window too.

Educate then assimilate.

Nmac

Your perspective from one who has grown up in an Aboriginal community is a welcome addition to the debate on this forum (which is now running across several threads).

You highlight the intractability of this issue and the reasons why successive state and federal governments have effectively left the issue alone.

I find it most interesting that even someone with your history and knowledge in this area you can say;

“sorry i dont have the answers, I'm beginning to think no-one has.”

And perhaps even more interesting is the lack of comment on Howard’s new paternalistic approach.

So can I ask;

Do you think that this approach has merit? Or at least more merit than the effectively-nothing approach that has preceded it?

Do you think these communities will remain better places after the constant police presence moves on? They are afterall only going into five communities out of some sixty in the Territory.

Do you think that the broader issues of community self-focus and self-sufficiency can be developed out of this heavy-handed approach?

Initiatives will fail while people fail to support the initiatives.
If those who are now merrily criticising the government's latest initiative have the answers then why have they not informed the government. (And don't give me the "but they have and noone listened" argument because that is a cop out - genuine answers would be worked on.)
Far too many people (a majority of them not indigenous Australians) have somehow come to believe that indigenous Australians are different and should have special rights granted to them. If I was an indigenous Australian I would find that attitude damned insulting - and I suspect many of them do. They are people, they have feelings.
Some of the worst offenders are the so-called "aboriginal activists" who keep on insisting on separatism - who, if my indigenous informants are correct, are despaired of by many indigenous people.
Like people with disabilities and unionists who have been "represented" by the same faces for far too many years and who cling to the past and past values, indigenous Australians need a new set of faces - Noel Pearson might be one if he does not get nobbled.